


No More Dreaming

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [22]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Parallel Universes, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-25 07:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10759569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Clara Oswald, if asked, would tell you that she considered herself a seasoned time traveller. After all, she's been kidnapped by Zygons, threatened by Cybermen, and shot by Daleks. But then she wakes up in a world without the Doctor, gets a phone call from her apparently-not-dead boyfriend, and discovers a small human she's seemingly had a role in creating. Nothing in time and space could have prepared her for this.





	No More Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> This fic developed from [this anon message](http://universe-on-her-shoulders.tumblr.com/post/159858352560/clara-wakes-up-in-a-world-where-the-doctor-never), namely:
> 
> _Clara wakes up in a world where the Doctor never existed._

Panic. Blind, incomprehensible panic. 

That was the first thing Clara felt as she woke up in her perfectly familiar bed in her perfectly familiar room in her perfectly familiar flat, although she wasn’t entirely sure _why_. Struggling for breath, she fumbled for her phone on her nightstand, needing to call the one person who could always calm her down. Contacts. Yeah. Contacts were good. She could do this. Open the app. Scroll.  _Dad. Dad Home. Danny - DO NOT ANSWER. Emma (Biology). Eve (Blonde from Lime Bar)._  

There was no contact entry for the Doctor, but it wasn’t like it mattered – she knew the number of the TARDIS off by heart. She dialled it with trembling fingers, then waited for it to ring as she tried to get her heartrate under control. 

 _The number you have dialled is unavailable. Please check the number, or try your call again._  

How could he be unavailable? He had signal anywhere and any _when,_ that’s what he’d always told her _._ The panic was beginning to choke her now, crawling up her throat and making her fingers shake as she opened her web browser and typed in “Doctor” and “blue box” and hit search, hoping against hope for a result. She’d never felt more grateful for the Doctor’s staggering lack of subtlety than in that instant of blind optimism. 

The little bar across the top darted across the screen. 

Nothing. No results. 

“UNIT,” “Kate Stewart” and “Torchwood” proved similarly ineffective. A bunch of webpages about Ikea cupboards were about the only sense she could find for the first term. The second provided a whole selection of social media profiles, none of which belonged to the _right_ Kate Stewart, and the last suggestion was autocorrected to “touch wood” by Google. She threw her phone onto the bed beside her, fully shaking now and praying that this is all a dream. Because there was no way this could be real. There was no way he couldn’t exist, but somehow, wherever she was: he didn’t. 

Something had gone wrong, and the Doctor didn’t exist. 

She really couldn’t breathe now, so she doubled over and tried to remember the things her therapist had taught her, long ago and in a world apparently far away from this one.  _Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exh-_  

Her phone rang, distracting her from her attempts at calming herself down. Instead, as if things couldn’t get any more surreal that they already were, there was Danny’s name and contact picture on the display, and the loud, all-caps warning underneath his number. DO NOT ANSWER. She wanted to wonder why her Past-Self – Other-Self? Whoever or wherever _she_ might be – would write that, but instead she found herself answering the call before she could think twice.

“Hello?” she asked in trepidation, her voice hitching only slightly as she asked: “Danny?”

“Oh, you bothered answering for once,” the man on the other end of the line – the man whose voice was _definitely_ that of her dead boyfriend – snapped in a sour tone. “Good to know you can actually act like a grown up from time to time. I’m coming ‘round to pick up Katie this morning, don’t forget.” 

“Who?” 

“Oh, that’s hilarious, Clara. Really mature. Katie. Our  _daughter_. Remember? You said I could have her overnight to take her to the wedding. For god’s sake, you can’t back out now, or so help me god, I will bring my solicitor down on you like a ton of br-” 

Clara didn’t answer. Her eyes flickered around the room, settling on the baby monitor on her bedside table, and she felt her heart lurch inexplicably at the sight of it. A child. She had a child. The one thing she’d resigned herself to never having after Danny’s death, and yet somehow in another world… here she was. With – or possibly _not_ with – Danny. And with a child. A daughter. 

“Mama,” a small voice cooed over the device, and she felt her world stop, her panic ceasing as she realised she needed to pull herself together and work things out. “Mama.” 

“Danny?” she asked, in as measured a voice as she could manage. “Can I call you back?” 

“Oh, well that’ll be a world first,” he spat. “Clara Oswald actually-” 

She hung up before he’d finished speaking, getting to her feet and wondering where on _earth_ she’d found the space for a baby in her tiny flat. Pulling on a dressing gown then approaching what she was fairly sure had been the lounge the last time she checked, she instead found it transformed: painted a pale shade of yellow with a cot in one corner and a changing table in another. There was a vast wardrobe, which she would have complained about, had it not been paired with an enormous bookcase that spanned a whole wall, with neatly ordered picture books and toys stacked on it in what she didn’t doubt was a meticulous order. Arranged at neat intervals every few feet, framed photographs depicted her – Not-Her, Maybe-Her, god, that was _weird_ – holding a small, squirming infant with dark curls and skin the colour of caramel, although each photo was conspicuously absent of any evidence of Danny. She squinted, looking more closely at one of her in hospital holding a swaddled newborn. There was an elbow visible in the edge of the photo, and she realised it had been folded to conceal him, cutting him out of the family portrait. Weird. 

“Mama,” the same tiny voice said again, and she turned around, steeling herself to look into the white-painted cot. Sure enough, there she was. The little girl from the photo, tiny and smiling proudly up at Clara as she stood with chubby fists wrapped around the bars. “Mama.” 

“Oh, my god,” Clara breathed, edging closer as though the little girl might bite. For all Clara knew, she _might_. This wasn’t her world, there was no Doctor, and anything could happen. “You’re a baby.” 

“Da.” 

“You’re _my_ baby.” 

“Da.” 

“You’re mine and Danny’s baby.” 

“Da,” the little girl said, bouncing up and down in her cot. _Da_ seemed to mean yes. Either that or she just liked saying it. “Dada.” 

“Yes, dada. Not trying to rain on your parade, kiddo, but the last time I checked, he was really very dead. Six feet under kind of dead.” 

“Dada?” 

“Yes, dada.” 

To her considerable horror, the little girl burst into tears. 

“Oh, shit,” Clara muttered, looking down at the infant in horror. She knew what to do with babies in _theory_ ; she’d been a babysitter in her teens, she’d had some practice. But that was _other people’s_ babies. “Urm. Shh. Don’t cry. Urm. Katie? That’s your name, right? Katie. Stop crying. It’s alright.” 

The little girl only sobbed with renewed vigour, and Clara realised she was going to have to pick her up. Bending over awkwardly, she lifted the child into her arms, letting her nestle against her chest and heaving a sigh of relief as Katie fell mercifully quiet and mumbled: “Mama.” 

“No, I’m not. I mean. Yes, I am, maybe, but this is weird. Just. Stay quiet. I like quiet. Quiet is good.” 

“Mama.” 

“OK, you do you,” Clara shifted her onto her hip, rocking her in a way she had seen her friends doing with their kids. “When is your dad coming to get you? Hm? Cos I need to work out how to get out of here, and you’re somewhat in the way. No offence, little one.” 

“Dada.” 

“Well, you’re quite the conversationalist. I always hoped my kids would take after me on the chattiness front, but evidently not,” Clara rolled her eyes, heading into the kitchen and hoping that Weird-Other-Version-of-Her was as organised as she was. She would have punched the air in triumph when she noticed the colour-coded calendar on the wall, but her hands were full, so she just squinted at it hopefully. “Ten am. And it’s…” she glanced at the clock. “Nine forty-five. Good. That’s great. What do babies need for sleepovers? And what wedding? Bloody rude of your father, if I’m honest, he could have been more specific.” 

“Dada,” Katie said again, beginning to suck her thumb and nuzzling into Clara’s shoulder contentedly. “Mama.” 

Clara bounced her on her hip a little, watching as the little girl smiled and feeling a bizarre rush of pride. “Yay! Smiling is good. Smiling is not crying. Who wants breakfast?” A thought struck her, and she grimaced in horror. “What do you eat? Dear god, I’m rubbish at this.” 

Katie blinked up at her with wide hazel eyes, still maddeningly silent and unhelpful, and as Clara was pondering the question of food, the doorbell rang. 

“No,” Clara said in a panic, knowing immediately who it would be. “No, no, no. Why is he always early? If this is some BS parallel universe, why can he not be _late_ or something?”

The doorbell rang again, followed by a loud, prolonged flurry of knocking. 

“Alright!” she called, approaching it and feeling a swooping sense of trepidation. Facing her dead boyfriend, without makeup, without prior preparation, and holding their mysterious daughter. Yeah. She could do this. She was a time traveller, she’d done weirder, and she could definitely do this. She’d already done it once before, after all. “I’m coming.” 

She yanked open the front door with a nervous smile, her stomach doing backflips as she did so. Danny was stood on the doorstep in a polo shirt and jeans, and he scowled almightily as soon as he noticed Katie and Clara’s attire. Namely their pyjamas. 

“Why the hell isn’t she ready?” he snapped, in lieu of a more civil hello. “Where’s all her stuff? Why are you smiling at me like that?” 

“Like what?” 

“Like…” he groaned, although Clara didn’t fully understand why. Had she done something wrong? “Are you taking your meds?” 

“My _what_?” 

“Your meds,” he said, loudly and clearly, as though she might have trouble hearing him. “Your psychiatric meds.” 

“What psychiatric meds?” Clara asked in bewilderment, not having a clue what he was talking about.

“Right,” Danny took Katie from her, then marched past her into her bedroom, reappearing and holding out a packet of bright blue tablets to her in a stern manner. “These.” 

“Those aren’t mine.” 

“Clara, this isn’t funny. Take your damn meds.” 

“Danny, I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Take your damn meds or I’m calling your social worker.” 

“My _what_?!” 

He drew himself up to his – admittedly not considerable – full height, and scowled down at her, although his expression wavered slightly as he saw the confusion in her eyes. “Please don’t make me make you take them. That was unpleasant enough last time.” 

“Danny… just humour me here. Pretend I’m from Mars. What happened?” 

“Clara, I’ll humour you if you _take your damn tablets._ ” 

“Fine,” Clara resisted the urge to stick out her tongue at him, instead taking out a tablet and swallowing it, watching as Danny nodded in satisfaction and combed through drawers until he located an empty rucksack. Keeping Emma on his hip, he began shoving items in it one-handedly and – to her consternation – in silence. “Humour me, then,” Clara said, as light-heartedly as she could manage. “Ideally fast, I should probably… go to work, or… something.”

“OK, Clara. I’ll humour you,” he began in a condescending tone, not looking at her as he spoke. “You can’t go to work, remember? You got fired for calling me a ‘fucking wanker’ during assembly, and chucking a mug of tea over me.” 

“I did?” 

“Yes,” Danny said in irritation, looking at her for long enough to scowl, and then resuming packing. “When reprimanded by Armitage, you amended your statement to ‘you’re a fucking wanker, _Mr Pink_.’” 

Clara bit back a giggle, knowing that laughing wouldn’t help the situation, but finding the mental image amusing. “Oops.”

Danny straightened up and glared at her as he continued. “So, you got fired. And you went insane, and I do mean that most literally. The doctors said it was post-partum psychosis, but, well… it never really went away. I tried to be nice and sweet and helpful and kind, but then you shagged that _wanker_ that taught English with you, and… well. Look at us now.” 

Clara tried to nod sagely, but her head felt odd. There was a dull, painful ache behind her eyes that was growing in severity with each passing minute. “Yes. Look at us now.” She realised how Danny was standing, and frowned, concentrating on him with some difficulty. “Why are you doing that?” 

“Doing what?” 

“Standing like that.” 

“Like what?” he shifted defensively, angling himself between her and Katie, and Clara’s fears were confirmed. 

“Shielding her from me. Like I’m dangerous, or something.”

“Because you’re _insane_ ,” he snapped, slinging the backpack over his shoulder and encircling Katie with both arms in a protective manner. “I wanted custody, but you managed to drug yourself lucid enough to fool the judge. Remember? Remember taking Katie from me?” 

“I wouldn’t hurt her!” Clara protested, not knowing the little girl but knowing for sure that she would never wish a child harm. “I’d never…” 

“Look, whatever. I’ll bring her back tomorrow evening after the wedding. Or I’ll get one of the lads to. Depends.” 

“Danny, humour me again for a minute… what wedding?”

He looked at her like she’d grown another head. “ _My_ wedding. To Martha.”

“Your…” she stared at him in shock, unsure how to react. Politeness seemed safest, even though her heart ached in her chest. “Wow. OK. Urm. Congratulations.” 

Danny looked suspicious but pleased, and he nodded tersely in what she assumed was gratitude. Clara’s head was beginning to pound, and she closed her eyes tightly for a moment, hoping it might help alleviate the pain. “Thanks. I guess.” 

“Do you have everything you need?” Clara forced herself to ask brightly, opening her eyes and affixing Danny with a courteous smile. “For Katie, that is.” 

“I…” he cleared his throat, obviously taken aback by her calm manner. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

“Can I say goodbye to her?” 

Danny shifted so that the hip Katie was perched on was turned towards Clara, and she scowled and tried to take the infant. Even if this was a dream, she needed to keep up appearances, and that meant being interested in the child. _Her_ child. Not-her child. Whatever. Besides. Something about the feel of the little girl in her arms felt _right_ , and she wanted to enjoy it a final time before she focused her energies on getting back to where she should be: in her own time, with the Doctor, minus an angry ex and small daughter. 

“No,” Danny said sharply, trying to move away. “It’s my turn with her.”

“Danny,” she protested, beginning to feel oddly tearful about being denied a last moment with Katie. “Just let me have a cuddle.” 

“No!” 

Clara snatched Katie before he could protest, holding her to her chest as the little girl took shuddery breaths that Clara _knew_ preceded a full-on cry. She wasn’t sure _how_ she knew that, but she did, and she pressed a kiss to her daughter’s hair. “Hey,” she murmured reassuringly, rocking her soothingly. “It’s OK.” 

“Clara,” Danny said in a measured tone, his expression panicked. “Give her back to me.” 

She realised how he was looking at her: like she could snap at any moment, and like she was dangerous. Like he didn’t trust her. The thought made her feel sick to her stomach, and she resolved to prove him wrong. 

“No,” she said with as much authority as she could manage, backing away with Katie. “Get out of my flat.” 

“You can’t do this,” he threatened, his eyes narrowing. “I’ll get the solicitors onto you. I’ll get them to take her away for good this time.” 

“Danny,” she scowled, her head beginning to throb painfully as she clung to the little girl. “Come back this evening.” 

“No!” he argued, advancing on her slowly. “She’s my daughter, give her to me!” 

“Get out.” 

“Clara-” 

“Get out, or _so help me…”_ she left the threat unfinished, but Danny took one look at the expression on her face and fled from the flat, slamming the door behind him. “Jeez,” she said to Katie, who was looking up at her with surprise. “He’s a bit uptight.” 

“Mama, pills.” 

“You couldn’t say that a minute ago,” she said in surprise, blinking at the little girl in her arms. Like things weren’t weird enough, apparently, her daughter now wanted to talk about medicine. “Or you didn’t want to. What else can you say?” 

“Mama take pills.”

“You shouldn’t be able to conjugate a sentence. I know this is some weird parallel dimension or whatever, but seriously?” 

“Mama, doctor.”

“You also give no shits about grammar. Who knew that parallel dimensions have such weird kids?” Clara forced herself to chuckle, trying to ignore the ache in her frontal lobe and the sudden sense of unease she was feeling. Wherever the hell she was, she needed to work out what the hell had happened, and fast. And once she’d done that, she needed to leave, and tell the Doctor about… well, whatever this was. He’d know what had happened, and he’d know what to do. 

“Mama, doctor, pills.” 

“Yes, honey,” she said distractedly, heading back into the bedroom to retrieve her phone. She needed to do some serious googling, in an attempt to ascertain how to escape this bizarre situation. “I had to take those pills your dad gave me.” 

“Mama take pills, see doctor.”

“What?” she said, looking down at the small human in her arms. “Are you just saying random things now, or is that an instruction?” 

“Mama take pills, see doctor.” 

Clara went back to where the discarded packet of tablets lay on the bookcase, and examined them warily. They didn’t _look_ lethal, but then again this was an entirely weird scenario, and they might turn out to be toxic. Although she reasoned that she had already taken one, so what damage could a few more do? “Should I take advice from a baby?” she wondered aloud, looking down at Katie. “I mean, the worst that can happen is that I die, and if this is a hallucination like the Doctor – capital D, thank you very much, kiddo – warned me about, then I should wake up in the TARDIS. No sweat.” 

“Pills.”

“OK!” Clara poked her tongue out at the little girl, throwing caution to the wind and popping out three more of the small, blue pills from their packaging. She looked at Katie with concern, then set her back in her cot, lest she drop her when… well whatever was going to happen, happened. “Pills. Mama take pills.” 

Clara rolled her eyes as she knocked them back, looking around in discombobulation for a moment as she swayed on her feet. Sinking to the floor, she felt her eyelids grow heavy, and she allowed them to close, finding herself – instead of unconscious, as she should be by rights – in a bright, white room, the light of which burned her eyes. She blinked until her vision had adjusted, noticing a robed figure stood across from her, their back to her.

“Am I dead?” she asked, trying to keep her voice level and not allow panic to consume her. “Because if so, shouldn’t I like… wake up somewhere else?” 

“Not dead, no,” an icily familiar voice drawled, and the figure turned to her, removing their hood to reveal Ashildr, who was smirking from ear to ear. That couldn’t be good. Nothing that could cause the Viking girl pleasure could mean good news for Clara. “Fortunately enough. Although, you could be.” 

“Why do you mean I ‘could be’?”

“Well,” Ashildr’s self-satisfied grin only widened, and she tilted her head to the side, affixing Clara with a pitying look. “Haven’t you worked it out yet, Clara?”

“I was in some kind of parallel universe or dream or hallucination in which I was apparently psychotic, and my dead boyfriend was not dead. Plus, I had a small human. Got all that, yep.”

“Oh, no.” 

“What?” 

“That was no vision, or hallucination. ‘Parallel’ would probably be the best description. What you saw was what _could_ have been. It was one of your many possible futures. I can show you another, if you’d like. Perhaps a more pleasant one.” 

The white room dissolved, and Clara found herself stood in the corner of the lounge-cum-nursery, watching herself rocking Katie on her hip as the front door opened and Danny stepped inside, holding a bunch of flowers and beaming. “Flowers for my beautiful wife and daughter,” he enthused, stepping forward to kiss Other-Clara on the cheek. “Happy anniversary, Clara.” 

The scene flickered and faded back to white, as Clara frowned, trying to make sense of what Ashildr was saying. “Right. That’s a great potential future, except… my boyfriend’s dead. I thought you’d got that memo by now.” 

“He is. But we can help with that.” 

“You’re getting a touch 3W about this now.” 

“Oh, very much so. There is a great overlap between our areas of interest. Clara, my employers are… concerned, you see. About you and the Doctor, and what you’re doing together.” 

“What’s he got to do with anything?” Clara tried to feign nonchalance, although her heart was hammering in her chest. “He’s not in these futures. He doesn’t exist.” 

“For good reason.” 

“Which is?” 

“My employers-”

“Who would be…?” Clara snapped, tired of the girl’s vagueness. 

“Confidential,” Ashildr said, gesticulating grandly in a way that seemed at odds with her youthful appearance. “They are concerned that the pair of you are getting out of hand. Causing chaos across the universe, with little concern for time and space.” 

“Right.” 

“They’d like to offer you an alternative.” 

“Which would be?” 

“A future. With Danny, right here.” 

“How are they planning on providing that _given that he’s dead_?”

“You would join him in the Nethersphere. You could be happy; get married; have Katie. The picture-perfect life after death. Everything you ever wanted for yourself, everything you ever planned. And do try not to deny that plan, because we’ve seen it.” 

“Right. And if I don’t want that? What happens then?” 

“Well, you can go back to the Doctor, and die, screaming in agony, at a later date.”

Clara’s heart skipped a beat, but she tried to maintain a neutral expression. “Are you sure about that?” 

“Quite sure,” Ashildr said with absolute certainty and an easy shrug. “Our predictions all concur that your death will occur, and it will occur soon.”

“I think you’re lying,” Clara said measuredly, desperately hoping that Ashildr was fabricating untruths. “I think you want me out of the way, for whatever reason.” 

“Oh, we do. But do rest assured, we aren’t lying about your death. We’re terribly concerned for your welfare, and we would like to avoid your untimely demise.” 

“I’m not going to choose this!” Clara cried, losing her temper at Ashildr and her maddening sense of superiority. “I’m not going to give up the Doctor – I’m not going to give up my life with him! I’m not going to give up my _life_ , for what, exactly? For death, and death-marriage, and a death-kid? What kind of life after death is that? I don’t choose it. I reject that out of hand. I want to live.” 

“Well, Clara, then your days are numbered, and will die alone and afraid. Because that’s what happens to humans who mess with time, or haven’t you learnt that yet?” 

“What the hell-” 

Ashildr clicked her fingers, and Clara found herself back in her own bedroom once more, panicking and gasping for breath. She fumbled for her phone, pressed the home button until Siri activated, and then stammered out: “Call the TARDIS.” 

“Calling the TARDIS,” it assured her, in a tiny mechanical tone, and the relief she felt that the TARDIS existed once more and she was back in her own reality was tangible. “Dialling.” 

_Ringgggggg. Ringgggggg. Ringgggggg. Ringgggggg._

“Clara?” the Doctor said brightly from the other end of the line, and she let out a shuddering breath. “Clara, are you alright?” 

“No,” she said in a small voice that was choked with tears. “Bad dream. Really, really bad dream.” 

“Well,” she could hear the smile in his voice, and it calmed her. “What about a visit to the second most beautiful garden in all of time and space to cheer you up?” 


End file.
